Follow Us

More

New Avatar Featurettes Confirm Fantasy Film Influence

We've got three new items off the Avatarpromotional assembly line to roll out for you today - two featurettes and the video of MTV's Live HD Avatar webcast that took place last Thursday.

The HD webcast was a pretty cool event to witness: it featured Avatar director James Cameron, along with stars Sam Worthington and the sultry-voiced Zoe Saldana, sitting around with MTV's Josh Horowitz to rib and joke about the film. It's worth seeing just to hear Zoe Saldana talk (seriously, my temperature rose when she started speaking the Na'vi language - is that weird?).

However, it's one of the two new Avatar featurettes that I really want to bring to your attention:

In the video entitled "Avatar Story Featurette," if you click to the 20-second mark, you can hear James Cameron say something that I've been saying ever since August and catching a lot of crap for even suggesting: Avatar has more fantasy film influences than sci-fi influences.

Man, have you sci-fi fans been tearing into me over this point! Well, I'm curious to read your lengthy arguments and comments now that Cameron is echoing the same sentiment. To get that ball rolling, why don't you have a look at the videos. I'll post the "Avatar Story Featurette" first:

Next up, check out this guide to planet Pandora as narrated by Avatar star Sigourney Weaver. People are saying this is "the best Avatar featurette yet," in that it actually does a pretty good job of familiarizing you with the environments, animals and customs of life on Pandora, without necessarily spoiling the film. Check it out:

Now that you've watched the video(s), let's discuss: between what you've seen here, and some of the fantasy-themed advertisements previously released for Avatar, are some of you sci-fi-centric Screen Rant readers ready to take a moment to reverse your stance on this genre debate? Or are we simply going to enter into another round of arguments? Because the whole "It's clearly sci-fi," stance becomes a bit harder to maintain when Cameron himself is out there saying "It's a fantasy action/adventure."

Avatar hits theaters on December 18, 2009. See you in the comments section.